Japan showed me a quiet beauty in imperfection

After several weeks in Japan I've come home a different man. Not smarter. Certainly not richer. But calmer and, perhaps for the first time, patient. It's as if that country whispers a lesson I and so many others are in too much of a rush to hear: that stillness delivers its own kind of wisdom.

Japan has a way of quietly rearranging you. At first it feels like a nation obsessed with precision and efficiency. Trains arrive on the second. People form queues so neat and orderly they could have been designed by an obsessive-compulsive architect. You can't find a bin anywhere yet the streets are spotless, with no graffiti to be seen.

Yet beneath all this punctuality and polish lies a quieter truth. The Japanese don't seek perfection because they know it doesn't exist. Instead they seek harmony, an idea captured in the philosophy of wabi-sabi - finding beauty in imperfection.

It's the opposite of everything we worship in the Western world.

We crave the flawless and the immediate: wrinkle-free faces, five-star service and Wi-Fi speeds that never falter. We edit, filter and curate our lives in a never-ending attempt to erase life's rough edges. Wabi-sabi, however, celebrates the flawed; a chipped bowl is to be revered not in spite of its crack but because of it. The weathered timber of a temple that has endured almost a thousand winters is to be admired, not replaced or concealed with paint.

Before you start rolling your eyes at yet another traveller returning in a Zen-like haze of calmness and serenity, Japan is far from flawless.

Its fertility rate dropped to a record low last year. Its ageing population - one in three are over 65 - is creating severe shortages in healthcare, manufacturing and agriculture.

Its productivity lags because of a rigid hierarchical workplace culture and a resistance to new technology (yes, the country that gave the world transistor radios and television sets still favours fax machines).

And there is growing opposition to more immigration and a backlash against tourism - despite it being vital to its post-pandemic economy.

I'm not sure I could live there - the population density in urban areas is close to claustrophobic, particularly late in the day when a tidal wave of identically-suited salarymen spills out of city offices, flooding the streets and subways.

But the place certainly seems to have cured, or at least tempered, my chronic impatience, probably because there's a collective patience in Japan that is hard to describe, let alone resist, until you feel it.

Queues are everywhere - from the small ramen bar that only seats 10 customers to the temples and museums where hundreds wait for admission. But not once did I hear an exasperated sigh, muttered complaint or the passive-aggressive shuffling of feet so beloved by Westerners to broadcast our suffering.

Mingled through this is an overwhelming sense of civility that goes beyond the bowing head of a cashier or the enthusiastic willingness of passers-by to help lost tourists. I'm not sure I've ever felt safer overseas than walking the streets of Tokyo at night. With more than 37 million people living in its greater precincts, Tokyo is the most populated city on the planet. Yet its crime rate remains remarkably low thanks to a culture that encourages self-restraint.

There's a much-loved Japanese saying - "Mono no aware" - that is closely related to wabi-sabi. It refers to the bittersweet awareness that nothing lasts, that everything eventually passes and there is no point in prizing perfection over the flawed.

We often travel with the expectation that we will be changed by what we see. But sometimes the most profound experience comes from what we feel. Japan taught me that patience isn't a weakness. It's grace under the pressure of time.

Perhaps the souvenirs and snapshots are not the real gift of being able to travel, but the opportunity to quietly reprogram our habits. Despite Japan's many problems, after weeks of experiencing a society that values harmony over haste and manners over muttering, I learned a valuable lesson.

Perfection is brittle and overrated.

Patience, however, is beautiful.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Have you been changed by a journey here or around Australia? What destination has had the most impact on you? Email us: editor@exploretravel.com.au